Three-Cornered Halo (18 page)

“But if the Grand Duke had been … I mean … He'd just have sent for me alone. He wouldn't have asked you too.”

“Perhaps he's lumping us all together; plus the Major ‘representing the British on the island'—and he's going to chop off all our heads, for your interference.” But that reminded her of La Bellissima and of a danger not remote and not funny at all. And there was still the matter of the old Archbishop. Something must be done. And in this evening's visit lay, almost certainly, their only chance of intercession. “Seriously—why do you think we've been asked? Why's Dick Bull been asked?”

Mr Cecil wriggled after her through the narrow lane of people, his pale face alternately lit to yellow brightness and plunged into deep shadow as the torches dimmed and flared. “You don't really think it's anything to do with oneself?”

“No, no, nonsense; he's probably secretly thankful to you for stopping him.”

“It could be. I've observed that there's a very thin line between Juan the Pirate and Juan the Old Wykehamist. I think we might suitably offer a tiny prayer,” said Mr Cecil, “that Winchester will be in the ascendant tonight.”

The pavilion was delicious, a miniature palatio, its central dome glimmering in the moonlight delicate as an inverted snowdrop above its cloistered patio and cool white colonnades. It was all white: white and silver. White lilies scented the patio, a white peacock strutted the marble-flagged floor, white rugs with a silver sheen of silk were scattered beneath white-painted tables and chairs; a fountain splashed silver over white marble dolphins that tumbled with white marble babies in its silver bowl. Only the eyes of Cristallo, the cat, were brilliantly blue, staring unblinkingly at the white peacock, from where it lay, still as a carved thing, paws turned inward, in its collar of pearls.

El Exaltida was sitting there with the Patriarch and La Bellissima; he a black blot in the embroidered jacket and knee-breeches with the great cloak flung across his breast like a brigand of old, she cool and slender in her narrow green silk, the embroidered lace veil hung over her shining head; the Patriarch in skull cap and cassock of creamy white serge. In such surroundings, Mr Cecil's extravaganza came into its own, it was the blazer and flannels, the linen and crushed straw that looked odd and out of place. They made their obeisances and sat down awkwardly, Cousin Hat and the Grand Duke by chance a little apart. A young woman handed round black coffee and a tray of little cakes. The Grand Duke poured liqueurs, the tiny glasses lost in his great, ringed hands. “Try a little cheesecake, Miss Cockrill, Miss Foley. They are very good.” He put out a hand and caught the girl by a fold of her skirt and held her for a moment, a prisoner. “She tells me she makes them herself.” He said in English: “A charming creature? Like a young fawn? She is my wife's new maid-of-honour.”

Major Bull looked at the young fawn and hastily averted his eyes. Last night, it had fallen to the Major, as a conscientious courier, to continue with the gentlemen of his party their tour of the island, when the weaker vessels, exhausted by the day's sight-seeing, had retired to bed; and, inflamed perhaps by the pressure of Winsome's hand on his sleeve as he squired her round the narrow streets, he had taken the bold resolution to avail himself of the comforts offered by their ultimate—indeed, as soon as the ladies had left them, their immediate—port of call. The comforts had turned out to be, alas! all of his own offering: a shoulder to weep on, a handkerchief (non-returnable) to sniffle into, a heart to confide in: jealous stepmother, by Jove, poor-girl-driven-out-of-home, boy-friend-refusing-marriage-till-dowry-forthcoming, eckcekra, eckcekra … Plus a little something extra towards the dowry, and an undertaking not to tell La Patrona. But there had been a charming little feast afterwards, in the general patio, all traces of tears now dried away: the wine of the country, pressed (apparently about two days earlier) from the grapes of the Toscanita plain, the inevitable chestnuts in honey, the dried figs, almond-stuffed, the brandied sultanas in lemon leaves: the little cheesecakes … And now … The Major's healthy pink face turned two shades duskier, leaving the moustache marooned like a white ship afloat on a round red pond; his prominent pale blue eyes swivelled glassily, he clasped his hands together till the knuckles cracked. Lorenna, reverencing before him with her dish of cheesecakes, took time off for a moment from her bewildering new duties to wonder if the poor gentleman were about to throw a cataleptico. She seemed dimly to recognise his face, but—one saw so many. A client, perhaps?

Miss Cockrill, also, was exceedingly startled. A new lady-in-waiting—introduced, apparently, in the course of this very afternoon, to La Bellissima's court! Watching covertly, she saw the great eyes, shadowed by the lace veil, turned to the girl and back to hers with an urgent appeal. She took a decision. She looked Lorenna up and down with a cool appraisal. “Yes, indeed: quite a pretty gel.” She eyed the Grand Duke limpidly. “By no means a
Plain Jane.
And looks—how shall I put it?—
as though she could keep her head
.”

You could see the quick flicker of appreciation, of calculation; an almost instant recognition of the truth. He knew that she knew. He gave her a small, ironical bow. “An admirable quality.”

“And rare among pretty young women.…”

“Who won't do as they're told,” he amended.

So it was open warfare. “This particular pretty girl,” said Cousin Hat, eyeing the new handmaid reflectively, “would she do as she was told—more than any other?”

“More than any other—who can say? But—I think, perhaps, yes. She at least would not suffer, you see,” said the Grand Duke, sweetly, “from conflicting counsel. Her mother is dead.”

“A young girl, of course, will look to her mother for guidance.…”

“And not only to her mother, it seems?” said the Grand Duke: not so sweetly.

“My own advice in such cases,” said Cousin Hat, hastily, “would be that a girl should certainly obey her husband in all respects.”

He bowed again. “I am very happy to hear it. Let us hope it meets with a better response than is usually the fate of advice.”

“Time will show,” said Miss Cockrill. She repeated it significantly. “Time will show.”

He took up a cheesecake and sat looking down at it, balanced like an outsize crumb in the huge palm of his hand. “You think so, do you? Just a question of time?”

“And of everyone playing his part,” said Miss Cockrill. She went a little red. “Well, I didn't mean exactly …” In her confusion, she too picked up a cheesecake; but, recollecting herself, put it back on her plate and pushed it ostentatiously to one side. “If you will forgive me, Exaltida—I don't think I care very much for these.”

“Don't you really? You surprise me,” said the Grand Duke. He threw back his head, opened his mouth and tossed in the little cake; and, catching the passing Lorenna by her skirt again, drew her to him. “Bring me more of your delectables, Senorita Seymour,” he said.

El Patriarca, meanwhile, was making civil conversation with Winsome Foley, Mr Cecil and the Major. His Beatitude spoke little English but was able to hope that their visitors had had a sympathetic day? The ceremonies were most anti-quatable, most venerably: no doubt they had found it all extremely buffant?

Quite, quite madly buffant, said Mr Cecil.

“There are in Los Caprichos of Goya—but more late—many …” He gave up the attempt. “Pardon me, if I speak in Juanese. There are, I was saying, in the later works of Goya many references to the Domenica di Boia, the Hangman's Sunday. The ‘Caza de Dientes,' for example—the woman pulling teeth from a hanging man. This was a common practice here on the island in the old days: it was the fashion then to have the front teeth studded with small jewels.…”

Mr Cecil indulged in a momentary vision of glittering smiles in Mayfair; but dismissed it immediately. The very essence of la mode was, and must be, from the couturier's point of view at any rate, mutability: and diamond-set front teeth would be far too permanent. Unless, of course … But then,
falsies
! Would it be worth it? Besides, who was he to put money into the mouths of jewellers and dentists—by putting it, he thought wittily, into those of his clients? No, no: a tiny pearl, perhaps, in one's own eye-tooth might be a publicity talking-point, but even that did rather
tie
one. “I don't see quite how they winkled the jewels out?”

Well, but they didn't, said the Patriarch, surprised. Just took the whole tooth out. “There was a great run on tweezers on those days and a regular scramble for the gallows, one reads; some of the victims not even dead yet and they used to put up quite a fight.” He laughed heartily at these pleasing reminiscences.

“One does long to know if the ‘Caza de Dientes' has found its way yet to the Forest Lawns Cemetery,” said Mr Cecil.

Winsome and Major Bull sat together, a little neglected, their cheesecakes, for one reason or another, untouched; the Major sinking a good many reviving brandies and shying like a startled horse every time Lorenna approached with her inviting smile. “My dear Major Dick,” said Winsome at last, for such was her whimsical name for him, “is something the matter?”

“Matter? Good God, no. Just going to ask you the same thing, s'matter of fact.”

But there was nothing the matter with Winsome, either. “A little tired, that's all. That horrible crowd …”

Shocking business, shocking business. The Major shook his white head and chattered like a budgerigar into his chins. “Helpless woman, sh'never have been out alone. Anything might have happened. Well, I mean—well, anything …!” He dug her in the ribs with an elbow like a navy-blue pork chop. “Damn it all, good-looking girl, y'know, Winnie, couldn't blame the fellers.…”

“Whatever do you mean, Major Dick?” said Winsome faintly.

Major Bull chattered and chumphed. Old buffer—past prime—still got eyes in his head all the same, eh, what? “Looking very charming tonight, old girl, by Jove,” said the Major with an air of admission not wholly flattering, but gazing most tenderly into her startled eyes.

“My dear Major!” Winsome, who had in her time played many a rubber of Heronsford bridge in the Major's company and watched the tide going out in hospitable bottles, glanced meaningfully at the brandy decanter. “Hush, please! People will hear you.”

Feelings-honest-gentleman-not-ashamed …

“Well, never mind that now, Major, please don't embarrass me,” said poor Winsome, fiercely whispering. “You will feel differently in the morning.” Over his protests and the opening of a recital apparently relating to a hen pheasant, which she could not begin to understand, she raised her voice and cried out with shrill determination that it was true, was it not, that the ‘Colossus' of Goya had been in fact a portrait of old Juan himself.…?

“Quite true, quite true,” said the Patriarch, a little surprised since he and Mr Cecil were by now adventuring along other paths of converse. “We have at the Palatio a sketch made thirty, forty years before the picture was painted—the same figure, but clothed in the costume that in the last days of his life, when Goya knew him, El Pirata would be wearing. And the monster devouring his children!—that too is recognisably …”

There was an interruption. Two new figures made their appearance, a wrinkled crone wrapped in black shawls and carried in a sort of litter by two attendants, one scrawny hand clinging to the hand of a stout youth of prep. school age, who walked at her side: La Contessa di Perli, ‘La Madre,' surviving parent of El Margherita, a venerable figure now nearing her ninetieth year, and Don Juan Isidro, a nephew of the Grand Duke, known officially as El Bienquisto, the Well-Belovéd. The chair was set down. At a signal from the attendants, Lorenna handed round her tray. The Grand Duke, introductions over, said sharply, “No sweets for you, Isidro.”

The Well-Belovéd emptied half a dish of candied chestnuts into his mouth and, losing a good deal of them when he opened it again to speak, was understood to ask why not.

“Because if you continue as you are now doing, and as your great grandmother encourages you to do, you will be named when you get to your English school, not El Bienquisto, but El Porco.”

“If anyone in England calls me names,” said Isidro, transferring a wedge of mashed chestnut to his left cheek, “I will have him beaten.”

“In England you don't have people beaten. You have to fight for yourself.”

“Then I shall fight.”

“If you took on so much as a blancmange,” said the Grand Duke, without love, “you would be vanquished.” The old woman began to jabber and he gestured towards her with his ringed hand. “Ask her what she wants.”

It was almost gruesome to see the devotion between these two: the old woman, thin, gnarled, brown and brittle as a bundle of dry sticks, the child as white and fleshy and fattily glistening as a lardy-cake. He stilled her chattering with a tenderly imperious hand across her mottled mouth, spoke to her soundlessly, forming his soft, thick lips into slow words. She answered, gibbering back, glib and shrill as a monkey. “La Madre says she does not wish me to ride. She says I shall fall off and be injured.”

“As to that,” said the Grand Duke, “I am glad it has arisen. I have asked these ladies and gentlemen here this evening to advise me on this very matter: as well as for the pleasure of their company.” He bowed to them slightly from his chair and asked suddenly, sharply: “Miss Cockrill—you, for example: have you got a bicycle?”

“A bicycle?” said Cousin Hat. “Yes, certainly.” A good, strong, lady-like, old-fashioned bike with a criss-crossed coloured string protection over the rear wheel to protect the sensible skirts—how else did the man suppose a lady of moderate means got about Heronsford to do her shopping? Winsome had her little car, to be sure, and tootled around most gamely, always in the dead centre of the road and never losing more than half a minute or so, after the traffic lights turned green; fancifully apostrophising other cars and their drivers as (
most
unreasonably hooting) they approached or overtook her: ‘Here comes the Vicar in old Slow-and-Bideawhile … That was Mrs Brown's Bentley; The Smoothing Iron, I shall christen it, goodness knows she's always Dashing Away with it …!' Her own car was called The Matchbox. Cousin Hat's preference for referring to it as that wretched little hearse of yours, she had countered by having it repainted, with another of her quaint fancies, in matchbox colours, dark-bodied with yellow roof and wings. “All it looks like now is something crawling out of a hive,” said Cousin Hat, cheated; but from then on Winsome called it Busy Bee instead, and she wished she had kept her mouth shut; the truth was that with Winsome you couldn't win. But anyway, yes, she rode a bicycle: and if that were the question, yes, again—she thought a boy should be able to.